Barriers and enablers to health and social services for older prisoners transitioning to community

Purpose When properly designed and implemented, prison-to-community transition programs targeting older prisoners could potentially save resources, reduce reoffending rates and contribute to improved public protection and safety. However, older prisoners transitioning to community are often neglected and overlooked, and thus, interventions targeted to address their needs are limited. The purpose of this study was to identify barriers and enablers to health and social services for older prisoners transitioning to community. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative study was conducted using focus group discussions with corrections officers, community corrections officers and parole officers (n = 32) in four correctional centres, two community corrections offices (CCOs) and one parole unit in New South Wales (NSW) in 2019. The authors used thematic analysis to analyse the findings. Findings The study identified three main themes relating to barriers and enablers: organisational, social and economic and individual and family and seven sub-themes: planning the transition, communication, assisting prisoners, transition programs, officers’ knowledge and scope of work, social and economic issues and offenders’ conditions Research limitations/implications The processes required to ensure effective prison-to-community transition of older prisoners are not well-developed suggesting the need for more systemic and organised mechanisms. Implications of the barriers and enablers for policy, research and practice are discussed. Originality/value This study identified a composite of barriers and enablers to health and social services for older prisoners in NSW prisons and CCOs.

Soil eukaryote community shift but not composition is consistently recovered by different OTU inference methods applied to long read metabarcoding data

Long amplicon metabarcoding has opened the door for phylogenetic analysis of the largely unknown communites of microeukaryotes in soil. Here, we amplified and sequenced the ITS and LSU regions of the rDNA operon (around 1500 bp) from grassland soils using PacBio SMRT sequencing and evaluated the performance of three different methods for generation of operational taxonomic units (OTUs). The field site at Kungsängen Nature Reserve has drawn frequent visitors since Linnaeus’s time, and its species rich vegetation includes the largest population of Fritillaria meleagris in Sweden. To test the effect of different OTU generation methods, we sampled soils across an abrupt moisture transition that divides the meadow community into a Carex acuta dominated plant community with low species richness in the wetter part, which is visually distinct from the mesic-dry part that has a species rich grass-dominated plant community including a high frequency of F. meleagris. We used the moisture and plant community transition as a framework to investigare how detected belowground microeukaryotic community composition was influenced by OTU generation methods. Soil communities in both moisture regimes were dominated by protists, a large fraction of which were taxonomically assigned to Ciliophora (Alveolata) while 30-40% of all reads were assigned to kingdom Fungi. Ecological patterns were consistently recovered irrespective of OTU generation method used. However, different methods strongly affect richness estimates and the taxonomic and phylogenetic resolution of the characterized community with implications for how well members of the microeukaryotic communities can be recognized in the data.

The development of the rehabilitation community transition support team as a response to COVID-19

Background/aims The rehabilitation community transition support team was created as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in faster discharges from the inpatient rehabilitation service. The aim of this evaluation was to explore the perspectives of staff and patients on their experience of the rehabilitation community transition support team. Methods Staff and patients in the new team were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results Staff interviews generated seven main themes: positive staff experiences; defining the ‘team’; mode of working; link role for the team; technology; relationships with patients; and support from colleagues. The patient analysis generated five themes: positive experiences of the rehabilitation community transition support team; relationship with rehabilitation community transition support team worker; mode of working; handling the hurdles of discharge; and defining the ‘team’. There were crossovers of staff and patient themes, particularly surrounding around face-to-face visits, defining the team and relationships. Patients indicated that contact with the community team helped them to overcome both practical and emotional hurdles of discharge. Conclusions The presence of a team supporting the transition from hospital to a community setting may be helpful for people who have been discharged.

Strategies to implement the safe hospital-community transition and mitigate hospital readmissions

Transition is defined as a journey made by a person between two relatively stable moments. This experience is lived over a certain period and is characterized by the appearance of changes that cause imbalances, doubts, disorganization, and interpersonal conflicts. Therefore, hospital discharge is a multiple transition (from health-illness, but also situational) from the hospital to the community, through which all individuals who have serious health problems have required hospitalization go through. If such a transition is made early and without proper planning, there is a serious risk that the discharged person will be readmitted in the short or medium-term.Recently, readmission rates have been increasing, particularly among the elderly population. This increase does not seem to be due to the severity of the diagnosis, but the comorbidities of which sick people are carriers.

Effective Practices for Helping Students with Neurodiversity Transition to Independent Living

School-to-community living transition programs aim to support students with neurodiversity to achieve productive community living and participation, including employment, leisure and recreation, learning and knowledge acquisition, interpersonal relationships, and self-care. Neurodiversity refers to variations in ability on the spectrum of human neurocognitive functioning explained by typicality in brain activity and related behavioral predispositions. Students with neurodiversity are three to five times more likely to experience community living and participation disparities as well as lack of social inequity compared to their typically developing peers. School-to-community transition programs for students with neurodiversity are implemented collaboratively by schools, families of students, state and federal agencies, and the students’ allies in the community. Each student with neurodiversity is unique in his or her school-to-community transition support needs. For that reason, school-to-community transition programs for students with neurodiversity should address the student’s unique community living and participation support needs. These programs address modifiable personal factors of the student with neurodiversity important for successful community living, such as communication skills, self-agency, and self-advocacy. They also address environmental barriers to community living and participation premised on disability related differences, including lack of equity in community supports with neurodiversity. The more successful school-to-community living transition programs for students with neurodiversity are those that adopt a social justice approach to full community inclusion.